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Thursday, March 19, 2009

Vampire Evolution 101

I hate Ancient Mummyflash Player. Just wanted to keep you updated.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the evolution of vampires, which is quite honestly true and not at all surprising at the same time. You could argue that vampires don't evolve, since they don't age for god's sake, but I think anyone who says that has their head up their tinky winky. Vampires evolve, and I'll prove it.

I'm sure you could go further back than this, but I'm starting with Nosferatu. This guy had it bad: lumpy bald head, ears so wild and flappy that they put Dumbo to shame, bad dental work. Even his interior decorator was cutting his PCP with Clorox. Poor Nosferatu. He never got the girls.

But then, along came Dracula. (Yeah, I'm skipping some vamps, and I'm going for the film version rather than the book version. If you don't like it, you can revisit the tinky winky in paragraph two. Heh.) Dracula had obviously gotten a stylist, only it was one of those budget stylists who had one good idea and took it to massive extremes. Bad image? Slick back your hair and put on a cape. Having problems getting girls? Slick back your hair and put on a cape.

It worked for Zom Cruise, didn't it? I rest my case.

Skip forward a lot, and you end up with The Lost Boys. They ditched the stylist, traded the capes for motorcycles, and found a cute chick in a sparkly skirt to hang with them. This is arguably the height of vampire evolution, as long as you don't take the Frog brothers into account. Or Corey Haim in the bathtub. Warning: if you think about those things too long, you'll explode. I've done it.

I put myself back together with sticky tack. I'm nothing if not persistent.

But on the other hand, we have the rest of the 80's vampires. For me, they're summarized by a single visual: A man runs, panic in every line of his body. We know there's a bloodsucker after him, that his moments are numbered. And then we see his attacker. It's wearing MC Hammer pants, has hair like Milli Vanilli, and is on roller skates.

It's one of the funniest things I've seen in my life. Don't believe me? Watch Fright Night II. It's in there. And vampiric evolution takes an enormous nosedive. That's worse than the cape and the slicked back hair, if you ask me.

Then we move on to Zom Cruise and his attempts to look menacing. I think long-term readers of The Wonder That Is My Blog know how I feel about that. And for those of you who don't? It makes me snarf milk out my nose.

There! This entry is full of lovely visuals, isn't it?

And then we come to modern day. Edward and his sparkles. (And let's not forget his evil twin, Ward, the vampiric merman.) Sparkle sparkle sparkle.

Now, you may not know this, but I'm actually a statistician. For REAL. And I coded the physical traits of all of these vampires and performed a couple of ANOVAs (I did more than one just for fun), and I've come up with mathematical proof of where vampirism will go next.

I don't think it's possible for you to say sparkle sparkle sparkle too much. It never fails, I always laugh--maybe a little hysterically, in this case (the horror! the horror of Vampire Richard!) but I laugh.

About Me

I like writing books, playing games, fighting evil, and cooking (everyone's got to have hobbies). My YA zombie comedy, BAD TASTE IN BOYS, is available from Delacorte Press right now! The next Kate Grable adventure, BAD HAIR DAY, will be available November 2012. Which is la awesome.